The leader of Brent council, Muhammed Butt, said 78 residents had spent Thursday night in a hotel, while the Met said bad weather had delayed the removal of the bomb.

Robin Mills, who lives in The Avenue, told the Kilburn Times: “From what I could see, [the device] was about six feet long and about a foot wide.” He described being evacuated for the first time as feeling “a bit strange”, saying: “I can imagine what people in the war times must have felt.”

In 2012, the Bomb Sight project attempted to map the incendiary devices that fell on London between 7 October 1940 and 6 June 1941. Created by Dr Catherine Jones of Portsmouth University and the National Archives, the map reveals the damage inflicted by German bombing raids during the blitz.